It’s a book series. It’s a semi utopia based sci-fi. The culture is an amalgam of species (including human). It’s run by “minds” hyper powerful AIs. Humanity is akin to pet dogs. A mix of pampered and useful.

Basically, humans live in a life of luxury and choice. Changing genders, or even species is very common. Immortality is mostly a logistics and boredom issue.

A bit of a guess, but it might be related to software cafés. They are a lot more common in the east.

Since multiple people can log into the same computer, it might over count them. They are also likely exclusively windows machines.

I believe that was a strike at their centrifuges. They are needed to enrich uranium to powerplant grade or weapons grade.

Iran had agreed to stop using them, as part of the treaty trump tore up. Afterwards, the lack of any detectable fallout indicated that they were not in use, since no uranium was present.

Basically they lost their ability to produce more weapons grade material. It is unknown how much (if any) was previously made, and might be stockpiled elsewhere.

It also shows that Iran seems to have remained in compliance, despite trump pulling out of the deal.

Pis are excellent mini computers. Unfortunately, their long term reliability isn’t quite there. When I used one, I was getting a couple of lock up crashes a year. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s just enough to be REALLY frustrating to the (less technical) wife. The tipping point is when it goes from “nice to have” to “expected”.

I acquired a 2nd hand NUC, and it’s been bomb proof for a few years now.

A lot of places train their police to de-escalate conflicts, as a default. This leads to far more reasonable encounters.

E.g. in the UK, we have some issues with racism and excessive racial profiling. I know quite a few people who dislike the police (of various ethnic groups). I know very few who fear the police (outside of them doing their job).

I also know a couple of people who work within the police (backroom). They are actively trying to deal with racism within the force. Unfortunately it’s a bit of a game of whack-a-mole, but at least they are trying.

America seems to be an exception. Just seeing your police out and about put me mentally on guard. They don’t radiate professionalism, but bully swagger.

A lot of vehicles have a beam dip adjuster in the cab. Mine pops out when I press the center of the light control selector.

Officially, they are to correct for a heavy load in the back. Unofficially, if you tweak them, you can flip between longer range, and polite as required.

If you watch your lights, there should be a fairly sharp cut-off at the top of their coverage. If that line ever hits a window or mirror, it will look like you are flashing them. If it’s too high, either fix it yourself (generally quite easy) or get it fixed.

I’ll just be happy when we phase out imperial and other weird thread types. Metric standardisation is a godsend over what came before.

The heads are a lost cause. They serve too many different purposes, with differing, competing, requirements.

The problem with applying that part of game theory here is it makes several assumptions.

The biggest is that the bigger party are playing for maximisation, rather than just to “win”. That is very much not the game with trump.

The second is the assumption that there is only 1 game in play at a time. America could cause devastating economic damage, if it went full tantrum. Europe has noticed how vulnerable they are to that sort of action. They need to patch the holes before playing hardball.

Under these assumptions, taking fairly meaningless hits to buy time makes sense. Pull the wolf’s teeth, before challenging it to bite you.

PhD level and up are notorious for over specialisation.

My university had a personal assistant, dedicated to 2 professors. Half their job was to make sure they made it to lectures on time. They still managed to be late sometimes.

My wife spent almost 2 weeks in hospital, after our child was born. The biggest expense was parking, at £25. £12.50/week.

Socialised health care is awesome.

Isn’t that basically what Huel is?

Different parts of the government. Charles has all but kicked him out of the royals themselves. This would just be finishing the job.

Neither group has any real say in prosecution etc. This is just an additional ceremonial “Fuck you for making us look bad!”

This only works if the group size exceeds the Dunbar number. Below that, you will quickly be kicked out.

The answer is quite mundane. I’ve a few friends in a (non-US) police force. The answer is that the rich/powerful are annoying as hell to go against.

They either know the law, or pay someone to know it for them. They can make obviously illegal things legal on paper. They can also nitpick everything. E.g. spending £5K on lawyers to get out of a £100 fine, since they don’t want to get the points. Any procedural mistakes, or paperwork errors can kill a case, or at least drag it out for years.

They also have contacts that can apply pressure. When their wife knows your boss’s, boss’s boss’s wife, they can make your life and career VERY uncomfortable.

End result, most officers learn to pick their battles with the rich and powerful. They will make your life hard, and will get away without everything being perfect.

In practice this can easily turn into taking the easy road. Even when the rich aren’t even technically in the right.

The rule of thumb with servers is

• Performance
• Reliability
• Power usage
• Noise
• Size

The trick is to remember you don’t actually need much performance. A home server isn’t generally a powerful machine. What matters is that it is always there.

A raspberry pi would actually make a wonderful server. It’s power efficient, small and quiet, with enough grunt to do most jobs. Unfortunately, it falls down on reliability. Arm servers seem more prone to issues than x64 servers. Pis also seems particularly crash prone. Crashing every 3-6 months isn’t an issue for most pi usages. When it’s running your smart home, it’s a pain in the arse.

I eventually settled on a intel NUC system. It’s a proper computer (no HDD on usb etc), with a very low power draw. It also seems particularly stable. Mine has done several years at this point, without a crash.

Bigger servers are only needed when you have too much demand for a low powered option, or need specialist capabilities 24/7. Very few home labbers will need one, in practice.

It’s also worth noting that you can slave a powerful, but power hungry system, to a smaller, efficient one. Only power it on when a highly demanding task requires sorting.

The uses of “ACHOO syndrome”!

Aka the photic sneeze reflex.

Apparently not everyone has this reflex.

Most of what they do is security theatre as well. They are just a lot more competent and efficient about it.

Had a friend who worked customs. 95% of their actual work was behind the scenes. Most of the public facing stuff was book keeping and window dressing.

Having visited the US from outside, it’s not even good security theatre. They seemed the least competent airport security I’ve dealt with. That list includes Kazakhstan and several middle eastern countries.

Fully agreed that it needs to be done right. I’m definitely not the best person to try and write it.

It also needs to be area specific. A predominantly republican area would need a different message to a predominantly black community.

Has Amazon ever actually said it wouldn’t sell the results of face tracking to data brokers? I can easily see it happening. It’s a lot of tasty data to them.

A better option might be a leafleting campaign.

It would need to bypass the “I’ve nothing to hide” effect. E.g. “Does your friend have an ex they don’t want to know where they are? Facial recognition would easily put them on your doorstep. Would you like a visit from them?”

Leaning on the ICE issues right now would also work in some areas.

If someone mocked up a few variants for different demographics, that could actually help.

Also, does anyone know an easy layman alternative to ring, that is more ethical?